The Special Juan

We play a casual afternoon round with Juancho Hernangómez when, all of a sudden, we cross into magician territory.

Golf is hard. That’s outright the most universally accepted truth in the sport.

There’s yet another, more subtle truth, vividly described by Alice Cooper in one of his interviews, on which he says:

“Lord help someone if he makes a good shot, because then he’ll be coming back, trying to hit that shot again and again.”

It’s a sentiment every golfer eventually understands: great shots in golf aren’t just elusive—they’re addictive.

Juancho Hernangómez wasn’t new to the sport when we teed up for a midweek summer afternoon. He’d spent some time swinging clubs, some of it alongside Adam Sandler at the Riviera Country Club in LA. We were about to finish a casual round and nothing quite prepared us for that moment: 10’ before an appointment he had to rush to, chipping tucked behind a bunker 30 meters away from the flag, onto an elevated green on the toughest hole of the course (Stroke Index 1). Makes a smooth up and down, ball catches the slope and rolls parabolically into the cup.

That kind of shot, is a point of no return.

Welcome, J. You’re forever one of us now.-